It is with great honor and excitement that I can announce that Redfly LTD, Redfly Marketing, has become Ireland’s first official AdWords Certified Partner. While we are still an official AdWords Qualified Company, Google has introduced a rigorous new exam schedule for certified partners and actually reduced the required managed spend.

The new qualification, despite it’s teething problems is a welcome step forward as I can attest that the new advanced exams are just that, pretty advanced. The past few days have been spent up late, studying and studying some more to get the advanced exams passed but we did it and it’s a very welcome birthday present :) Thank you very much Google!

An AdWords Qualified Company has to manage a minimum of $100,000 per 90 days of advertisers spend and pass some simple exams. Currently, including Redfly, there are only 6 verifiable qualified companies in Ireland. This is being phased out over the next 6 months and Google will be replacing it with the AdWords Certified Partner program which although has a lower spend threshold, requires much more difficult exams to be passed to achieve it. We are very proud to be Ireland’s first certified partner in the new program.

More information on the certification can be found here. Seems like they are planning to release a lot more certification programs and consolidating them all into one area. Info on the future partner programs can be found here.

I’d like to thank Jen, Arnold and of course myself for working so hard on top of their existing duties to pass the advanced exams (which do include some pretty advanced API questions!) and get us certified. Although due to known issues with the program not all staff are showing on our company profile page, I have been assured they will show over the coming days.

I am sure there will be a lot more AdWords Certified Partners appearing in Ireland over the coming months, we’re just delighted to be first. Thank you to all our clients for their patience (and use of their account spend) to achieve this qualification. It means a lot to us.

Everyone is allowed on self back pat post per year right? This is ours for 2010.

Note: To those who already hold individual qualification status and are part of a qualified company, check your emails, Google are sending out vouchers to take the new exams for free.

Barry, thanks. Have you taken the new advanced exams? I’m delighted that they actually test practical knowledge rather than just theory. You’ll actually have to have managed a fairly large campaign and know what you’re talking about to get a pass. A HUGE step forward I think. Certified partners also get discounts on API usage now too. Expect to see us release some of our internal AdWords tool for free in the coming months :) BTW, are you guys doing EXIT this year?

Mate congratulations! Well done. Took the search exam last night – I agree it’s much harder & that’s a good thing (you tell me your score & I’ll tell you mine;) I have to say though I’m pissed off that they’ve dropped the spend threshold to $10k/month… there will be squillions of ‘qualified’ agencies now instead of the few before (there were only 20 in Oz) Gutted I missed you at SMX Sydney – we’ll have a beer next time you’re over this way!

@Mike, Thanks. You’re right, there are going to be a lot more, that’s why it’s important to be first. ;) Gutted I couldn’t make Sydney myself. Damn volcano. I’ll be over that way towards the end of the year for…various reasons. so I’m sure out paths will cross.

Oh, and it was 97% on the Fundamentals and 91% on the Adanced. :)

@Kim, Seriously, if you were not married and we’re not so awesome, I’d swear you were looking for a date or looking for something from me ;)

@Andrew, thanks. Treating myself to a 1/4 day :)

@Nick, thanks. Sorry I missed you last night.

@Alan, congratulations! Well deserved! Had to pull a few strings to get the results posted early ;) And Yes, from my research there are (was?) only 7 VERIFIABLE qualified companies in Ireland including ourselves. With the reduced spend, there’s going to be a lot more.

Any idea what this means to the people who were already AdWords certified? Kinda pulls the rug out from under them…

Jordan mcclements Says: May 16th, 2010 at 4:12 pm

Finally got round to sitting the advanced search exam. Got 98%…I think thus means PPCNI.com is the first adwords certified partner in N.Ireland unless someone else up here has got certified already and then hid the fact really well…? My experience was that if you spend 3 or 4 hours in the revision center beforehand, then it is pretty easy to pass, but it certainly is harder than the fundamentals exam… (for the record , I spent far longer than 4 hours revising, but I wouldnt waste more than 4 hours revising the next time. ) Also it said (on my exam anyway) that the pass rate was 80%. That means you can get a lot of questions wrong, and that is just well, e.g. What is 2+2? A. 3 B. 5 C. 5.5 D. 2.5

I am studying right now to certify as an adwords consultant and have been running my own ads for my tutoring business for some time now. I am wodenring if anyone knows how many people are certified in adwords. I am trying to determine how competative the market is to get into and if it is already saturated.

I can imagine the exam conducted by google that should be beyond my thinking’s. Can you please share how you prepared yourself and what sources you use for study materials? what is the minimum qualification needed for this exam or a seo who has less programming experience can attempt it or ? I hope you should clear my doubts?